I suppose for our very first blog post an introduction to who we are and how we got here would suffice. I will start from the beginning, TJ and I (Jackie) married in January 2004 and shortly after that, our adventure began. It is funny, when you look back at your past, you can see God’s hand at work! He was certainly working in our lives, although we did not know it yet. About one month after marriage, TJ loaded up and shipped off to Iraq with the Marine Corp, yes, the biblical mandate to stay home with your new wife for one year before going off to war did not apply here. He was over there for three very long months while I was back at home, in Ft Worth Texas, house hunting, being the military wife, and holding down the fort on this end, oh yeah and growing that precious baby Asher, who we were eagerly waiting to meet in July of 2004. After some heart breaking news that our first little baby was going to be very sick, TJ was rushed home by the Red Cross to be with me while we went through testing, sonograms, and more testing. We soon found out that Asher was a perfect little boy and a mistake had been made on the part of the testing, whew! But, praise the Lord, TJ was able to stay home with us. Asher was born July 1st 2004 and we brought him home to our tiny house in West Fort Worth. Now finally, life could begin. TJ began showing symptoms from the war and our life together quickly fell apart, it was easy to see things were going to get tough. I am so thankful that we were both stubborn and we didn’t give up on each other, or our dream of a family. In November of 2005 our next blessing, Isaac, was born. Right before Isaac’s birth, TJ was medically discharged from the Marine Corp, he was happy to live his newly gained freedom, but scared to support his growing family without the financial security of the military. Now this is about when things just got bad, TJ spent most of his time in the hospital, and we lost everything we had, our little house, our cars, everything. After a very long road, he began treatment in the VA, and this is when life began looking up for us. About this time, Ethan was born, April of 2007. Now our adventure was about to really take off! After spending a short time in Keller Texas, we got the wild idea to move across the country to Pensacola Florida. We moved in July of 2008, three baby boys and I was about to give birth to our daughter in August. We put everything we owned in a Penske truck and headed out, we had no destination, other than Florida, of course. But, we had that truck for one week and that was about how long it took us to decide where to live! Shiloh, was born in August of 2008 in Pensacola Florida, and by September, I was homesick and ready to come back home to Texas. So, in October we put everything back in that Penske truck and made the 700 mile trip back to Texas, this time with four babies. We landed just north of Dallas in a small town called Anna. This is where the Lord grabbed our hearts and things began to change. We started in a small community church in Anna and God had repalced our hearts of stone with a heart yearned for Him. In our prayers, TJ and I begged the Lord to use us, but we were not quite ready yet. He was still conditioning us. We moved closer to Dallas, in Little Elm Texas. We rented a house from a man named Fola (remeber this part, it’s important) and TJ decided to go back to school. He started photography at the Art Institute in Dallas. Fola had a friend, Bill Rogers, that he brought with him when we signed our lease. TJ began talking with Bill and decided he could help him, some how. The Lord was quickly changing our hearts and lives, He opened our eyes to the blessing of children, He put it on our hearts to be more modest in our dress and our lifestyle, He was showing us to live a more holy, sanctified life. Around this time, Seth was born, December of 2009. TJ soon felt the profession of photography was going to cause him to have to sacrifice a godly lifestyle since he was constantly faced with temptation. So, before he started school at Le Tourneau Universtiy in East Texas, we decided to spend the summer in Pensacola Florida doing beach photography to earn extra money. We rented a house in Orange Beach Alabama and attended a wonderful church in Pensacola, Mount Zion Bible Church. The devastating oil spill in the gulf ruined our efforts to take any beach portraits. So, we made the most of the summer and spent our time evangalizing, fishing and sun bathing at the beach. Summer came to an end and we were off to East Texas to start TJ’s new endeavor in pilot training. We made the 700 mile trip, again, this time with five kiddos in tow. We rented a farm in Jacksonville Texas, a house and 37 acres, it was perfect for our growing family. There was so much for the kids to do, we raised chickens, we had cows for a while, we attempted a garden, all this and we managed to homeschool Asher and Isaac and TJ went to school five days a week. We attended a wonderful family church in Tyler, we found our home. The people at Family Fellowship Bible Church became our family. It was a family integrated, home-schooling church busting at the seems with large families. We were ready to be settled here, TJ would be training in airplanes for the next five years and we planned to stay put for awhile. Our family has received the call into the mission field, and we were ready to go wherever the Lord called us, as long as it wasn’t somewhere cold, ha ha, just kidding. We were prepared to go anywhere. Now, remeber earlier, in Little Elm, when I briefly mentioned Bill Rogers? Well, now you will really see the Lord’s work, he sent TJ an email with some questions about the military, well a few phone calls later and Bill was on a plane to Texas. He stayed with us through the Thanksgiving holiday. This is when he began to share his heart for Liberia, his home country. He told us of the history of Liberia, what his childhood was like, the horrific civil war the Liberian people faced and his dream for building a foundation to help the children in Liberia. God linked our hearts and his dream quickly became ours. Well, Bill was a rolling stone, as were we, and he moved on to his next adventure. In January of 2011, as TJ was eagerly beginning his spring semester at Le Tourneau, we received the news that the funding on the GI Bill had been changed and we could no longer afford to attend a private school. We began searching for a public school that he could continue his training in, and that is how we found Palm Beach Florida. So, we finished out the school year, gave birth to our sixth child, another daughter Cana, and prepared to make the move back to Florida. Only this time we would be traveling to the southern part of Florida, 1300 miles with our favorite Penske truck and this time six kids, one of which was three weeks old. We settled in to Boynton Beach Florida and TJ began classes at Palm Beach State College. Now, Bill is back with us in Florida and we have began the plans for the foundation he has been dreaming of, The Bill Rogers Youth Foundation. We are still here in Boynton Beach for the time being as we work day and night on all the details of beginning this ministry. We have planned an upcoming trip to Liberia in March of 2012, and TJ has decided to take off a semester of school to get this foundation up and running. Please follow us on our journey as we serve the poeple of Liberia.
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